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As the title of this video suggests, we're discussing Thai Parliament. And the thumbnail might not seem like something that would have anything to do with Thai Parliament. When I thought of the title "to dissolve or not to dissolve" - which I will get into here in a minute - there's a lot of talk in the ether of the internet and in sort of the ether of the Thai Political spheres and across the media here, especially the English language press which is talking about 'no confidence motions versus dissolution' which I will get to in a minute. That said, when I was reading the article I am going to cite, I just sort of thought “Thai Parliament: to dissolve all or not to dissolve”, sort of, like "to be or not to be", and then I thought of the movie Last Action Hero with Arnold Schwarzenegger where there is a scene where he's Arnold playing Hamlet, it's "to be or not to be" - not to be - and then something blows up. It's kind of a spoofy kind of thing in that particular movie, which was fantastical to say the least, but link in the description below for the citation and everything on the photo and the movie. That being said, I really did think of this because I like how it's become a really weird argument, and everything shifted since this summer, and you have got a lot of in my opinion disingenuous arguments regarding the notion of a no-confidence vote regarding this Government presently; it's just an odd thing. Let me just jump in.

I thought of making this video after reading an article from Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: PT (that is Pheu Thai) defies threat of early election. Which this is the weirdest thing in the world. So Pheu Thai is now like "oh we're not scared of an early" I don't even know what the posture is but they kind of seem to want to put on a no-confidence motion to censor this Government which has been in like what 7 weeks now, or somewhere thereabouts that has come in on a Memorandum of Agreement with the Party that agreed to support it; they're calling it a minority Government. Again I come from the Congressional tradition of the United States where we have a Congress, and we don't utilize Parliament in the more sort of Western European sort of British way. So look, forgive me if I don't get the terminology exactly correctly, but Anutin did get 311 votes in favour of his Premiership and in favour of him forming a Cabinet. Now a big hunk of that is People's Party who have said, "hey, we're remaining in the opposition", which I'm pretty sure, but will vote for Anutin along the lines of 'this will be temporary' which I'm pretty sure Bhumjaithai was just, 'all right, whatever. You get out of our way, we'll do whatever we want within the Cabinet for the time that we have', but it is a weird posture and it's a weird posture to be clear, because the Party that threw major votes behind the Government has just said we're volunteering to sit as a sort of an opposition. But meanwhile Pheu Thai was also essentially dislodged from the Government via this mechanism is also the opposition. So it's like Thailand has an opposition and a shadow opposition, I guess. 

That said, the assertions from Pheu Thai in favour of a censure as opposed to a dissolution, ring kind of hollow to my ears after having sat through this summer when the acting Prime Minister who was of the Phue Thai Party, came in and tried to dissolve Parliament himself - although he didn't have the authority to do so, and was told multiple times by the Council of State and other experts on the law around him that he didn't have that authority - attempted to dissolve the Parliament. Now that didn't happen because he didn't have the authority to do it because he was an acting Prime Minister and wasn't one of the slated Prime Ministers that was put into the Office pursuant to due process, Elective and Parliamentary due process here in Thailand, he didn't have the ability to do that. Now let's go back and look at the timeline why he wanted to do that. Well it was right after he changed a bunch of Officers within the Ministry of Interior whose primary responsibility would be overseeing a possible future election and then attempting to dissolve the Parliament in order to have that election. Now this same crew, now in opposition, because this scheme was thwarted, would like you to believe that they are very much in favour of a no-confidence motion possibly, rather than just letting this Government play out its remaining, I don't know, 6 or 8 weeks. I mean they agreed to 4 months with People's Party and by all accounts Anutin actually looks eager to call an election

Meanwhile, Pheu Thai is sitting here kind of going, "oh well we want to do this no-confidence vote. For what? A government that lasts another 8 weeks? And meanwhile they want to have an election, something you claim to have wanted not a few weeks ago. Oh, but you wanted them where it was your people that possibly would have been counting the vote or likely would have been counting the vote. Is that why it's not wanted now? Is that why even the thought of a no-confidence motion of a government that presumably would only last a few more weeks past the no-confidence motion, if it's survived it? Is that why this is so important? I mean the reason I'm getting angry about this is it seems that what the current Prime Minister's default would be, would be to call an election sooner rather than later. All we have heard about from certain quarters, especially the quarter of whatever you want to call the shadow opposition or the real opposition in the form of Pheu Thai, has been nothing but elections, oh elections, blah, blah, except when prospect is sitting there that they might not win it. Is that when, "ah, maybe we can just stall going into elections!" It seems like a very disingenuous argument when you have been sitting here watching this for the last 6 months.

Again, let's dive in here, quoting directly: "Pheu Thai Party Deputy leader Sorawong Thienthong on Saturday brushed aside warnings of an early House dissolution if the opposition files a no-confidence motion, saying the Government should not stay in office "even one more day" given its performance." They are trying to brush this off, after trying to use this as a mechanism it looks like to stall a possible election; again I have talked about it in prior videos. Each day Bhumjaithai is in this "Government" which really let's be honest, it's a government, it's an Administration, but it was designed as a stopgap. It got 311 votes; it's legally and legitimately there, it's the government, but it was designed for it looks to me like, based on everything we have heard from all the Parties involved, it was designed for 4 months, to undo it looks like the "damage" done by the rump coalition government under Pheu Thai who they've already replaced a lot of the Interior Ministry personnel that apparently pertained to the elections. Mr. Anutin came in, immediately took the Interior portfolio as well as being Prime Minister and has reshuffled everything. It looks to me like People's Party is better with that than the alternative which I'll get into here in a moment in further detail as People's Party did chime in on this whole notion of a no-confidence vote or an election or whatever. But the point I'm trying to make here is the entire thing it's "oh now we don't want an election" even though weeks ago they were chomping at the bit to get one, to the point that the acting Prime Minister did something that people told him in advance was not authorized. This is just an odd - politics may make strange bedfellows but this is just a weird posture to be arguing from politically. Quoting further: "Mr. Sorawong said the Party had discussed submitting a censure motion against Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul and was considering the timing to avoid accusations of obstructing Charter amendments or delaying relief efforts for Southern flood victims. He said Bhumjaithai's threat to dissolve the House if PT filed a no-confidence motion would not deter the Party from performing its duty" - What duty? 6 to 8 weeks ago you said we needed an election. Now you are saying what, we don't? We need to have a no-confidence motion for a Government that's only going to last another 8 weeks at max likely anyway? Quoting further: "adding such a move would be an attempt to avoid scrutiny." How much scrutiny has the guy got to be under? He was just under scrutiny to get voted in with 311 votes into this government, which when did that happen? Less than 2 months ago, a matter of weeks ago? I mean how soon does he have to be brought under scrutiny and does the government. Look, I'm very rarely in favour arguing for a government, but credit where credit is due, and let's call out illogical criticism where we see it, they haven't been in there long enough to say that like "oh we need to put them under some scrutiny." I mean look, we saw Srettha go through and get removed and he tried to do all kinds of stuff like the Digital Wallet, the funding for which there's a whole Court case where they said it was something akin to a "nuclear option" which the implications of the legalities associated with the funding of that, and that went on for like a year we were under that guy. Then we had Paetongtarn who we had to sit patiently by where instead of a resigning like somebody with, I don't know, no pun intended or no pun to the channel intended, but somebody with integrity, would have resigned under those circumstances. No, we had to sit around for weeks while we waited for the Constitutional Court to hand down their decision that she needed to be removed, and then we had to sit under an acting Prime Minister who knew very good and well upon advice from the Council of State that he couldn't dissolve the Parliament, it tried to do that anyway. I mean scrutiny? Anutin has been sitting in the Parliament's going back to who knows when. We all know the guy, and I haven't seen anything yet. Yeah, there's criticism revolving around the flood, but I mean yeah maybe there's some valid criticism; maybe things didn’t go off perfectly. This is how natural disasters go. Again, I do not like being an apologist for any Government but credit where credit is due here. Quoting further: "He said the Bhumjaithai Party should instead persuade the People's Party, which backed Mr. Anutin as Premier, to maintain its support if the Government was performing effectively." Well interestingly enough, I'm going to skip ahead and then I'll reread through this.

That said, quoting further from later in the article: "Former Pheu Thai spokesman Prompong Nopparit criticized the People's Party for signalling it would not support a no-confidence motion." So what are we talking about here? He's saying that they need to persuade People's Party, but yet People's Party signalled that it didn't want anything to do with it, so what are you talking about? Quoting further, and I will just read through this again but I want to go back and make that sort of salient point because they are saying, "to maintain its support if the government was performing effectively" - so they are trying to sort of call in question what People's Party may do, but again within the same article or seemingly within the same breath, well I shouldn't say within the same breath, but another Party Spokesman, Prompong Nopparit criticized People's Party for signalling it would not support a no-confidence motion. So on the one hand, it's sort of like "oh do you really have a stable support base?" and then in the same article, they're like "well it actually looks like they have a pretty stable support base because People's Party has signalled it's not going along with this. 

Again this is all to some level conjecture, but there is just a lot of double-speak that has been going on from a certain quarter of this Parliament, on every issue. I mean it's all we have been dealing with since 2023. It's a lot of World Economic Forum talking points, and then a lot of double speak regarding clear procedure. Quoting further: "With 141 MPs, Pheu Thai alone could not topple the Government without PP support he said." - and it doesn't look like you have it, so what are you talking about? - "a no-confidence motion was justified due to the Government's poor handling of the severe flooding which several people died, he said." Look, the southern floods were a tragedy, okay? And they are and it's still going on, but I've been watching this since especially in the English language press kind of looking at you Bangkok Post, although Pattaya Mail has seemed to kind of picked up on some of the narrative and some other outlets that I've read. This whole notion that, "oh yeah, we need a no-confidence motion because Anutin just bungled the flood." What? Did he call the rain God and tell the rain God that we will open up Thailand anytime he wants to rain however much he wants? No he didn't affirmatively screw anything up. He didn't call for that. It happened. Things happen. Disasters happen. Now look, are there places where the government in their protocols or whatever, could have been better? Maybe. And let's work on those but I find this blaming the flood, saying "oh it's because he handled the flood." He didn't call up the clouds and say, "hey clouds, we will open up Thailand anytime you want to be flooded!" Like some people did with regard to the border just recently. I mean trying to pin this sort of political onus on this guy, it's been a few weeks, and yes, a flood has happened. Has there been a response? Yes. I've been following it. I haven't seen that it's been overly unreasonable. Has it been perfect? Maybe not, and where it has fallen short, we need to address that perhaps. That said, he himself, I mean what are you talking about? Quoting further, quote: "As the opposition, we can't allow the government to continue not even another day, because the damage has been done, he said." Quoting further: "Pheu Thai Party leader Julapun Amornvivat on Saturday denied reports the Party would file a motion on December 12, saying no conclusion had been reached." Yeah, it's still a lot of talk, and whether or not - it's such a weird thing. They just said they wanted an election. Now they're saying they don't, and they want to have a no-confidence motion of a government that at least is on paper supposed to only last like another 2 months, presumably at the outside of the timeline. And meanwhile, the sitting Prime Minister would actually prefer it looks like, to just dissolve the House and have an election. What's the problem? After all the years of hearing about election, what are we talking about here? Quoting further: "He said Pheu Thai MPs were expected to meet before the new Parliamentary session, during which the matter would likely be discussed as part of the Patty's internal process. Any decision would rest with the Executive Committee and the Party leader, he added." And again to reiterate, former Pheu Thai Spokesman Prompong Nopparit, and I should clarify that, it is former Pheu Thai spokesman, so earlier I said maybe that was coming from the Party. Okay if this is a former spokesman, maybe you can say it's not coming directly from there. So quoting again: "Former Pheu Thai Spokesman Prompong Nopparit criticized the PP for signalling it would not support a no-confidence motion."

You know, it just sounds like a lot of whining frankly at this point from a certain faction within the Parliament, because they don't like that all their machinations and things have not really worked out the way that they thought that they would. And I'm really just kind of tired of the nonsense; I think most folks here in Thailand are. I think most Thai voters probably are as well. And frankly the idea that somehow delaying an election here would help things, I just don't see where that logic comes from. That being said, all of this remains to be seen. It remains to be seen how all of this is going to play out, so we will certainly be keeping you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.